Frozen River

As I mentioned in the previous post, Synecdoche, New York was the first of a two-fer I had planned that afternoon. Heading out back out in the rain of Waltham, I bought a burger and fries at a diner beside the commuter rail station, then got back in my car to navigate the back streets to nearby Newton.

My destination was the West Newton Cinema. From my stay in the Boston area, I had learned it was one of the places were indy films got a showing. It has a nice website online with a schedule posted far in advance, but annoying during the Thanksgiving week, they had failed to update it. I had to resort to a tool I rarely use lately---the telephone, to find out that the movie I had been tracking for weeks---Frozen River---was finally leaving. The short Thanksgiving week meant that the schedule would roll over on Wednesday instead of Friday. According to my rules of engagement, Frozen River went straight to the top of my priority list.

This was my second attempt to reach West Newton Cinema. The week before, attempting to see another last-chance showing of a different movie, I had failed miserably and wound up in downtown Boston (but that's a different story). But Frozen River was a must-see film for me. It had won at Sundance the previous January, and I had wanted very much to see it. Before getting to Boston, I had resigned myself to seeing it on DVD, and I was thrilled to have the chance. But according to the manager on the phone, it was the 6:25 showing that day or never. No excuses this time.

Fortunately it was fairly easy to get from Waltham to Newton. It only took ten minutes on the back streets, and I recognized the neighborhood once I found it. Parking was easy along Washington Street. I had an almost an hour to kill, and spent time in a nearby Dunkin Donuts reading my battered copy of The Ugly American.

The West Newton Cinema did not disappoint me. It was a real historical gem---an ancient multiplex, at least six decades old, frayed, and unrenovated. These kind of old city multiplexes are a new phenomenon for me---out west, all the old theaters are single auditorium establishes. From the street you would not know how big it was, just a single entrance amid a row of gift-shop boutiques. Once inside, one could see its expanse. The men's room door in the basement made a hideously loud clack as I let it shut.

The auditorium had about a hundred seats---the old kind, some of them broken and unusable. The screen was small but still large enough for a good enough. About fifteen people showed up for the last showing of the prize winner.

It did not disappoint me. The movie is set in the North Country of New York State, around the town of Massena, a place I had camped four years ago during my cross country trip, as well as on the nearby Mohawk reservation. The theme centered largely on White-Mohawk relations, as well as on the grinding soul-crushing poverty that affects both populations, and the desperate acts that it drives people to do.

The story was fresh and original. The characters, played by unknown actors, were very compelling. There was nothing about the movie I could fault, although the print was a little scratchy at this point.

I particularly liked the way the story unfolded based on the moral choices of the characters. In this way it was a very classical. One of the things that drives me crazy about many contemporary movies is that the abandonment of cause-and-effect when it comes to the fate of characters. Frozen River was the kind of movie I really enjoyed.